Edward Rowland Sill: The Twilight Poet

265 Pages·1955·33.674 MB·English

by  Alfred Riggs Ferguson (auth.)

EDWARD ROWLAND SILL: THE TWILIGHT POET
INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARS
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ASERIES OF BOOKS BY
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ADVISORY BOARD
J. ANTON DE HAAS
Professor of International Relations at Claremont Men's College
PHILIP MUNZ
Director of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden
WILLIAM T. JONES
Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College
EDWARD WEISMILLER
Associate Professor of English, Pomona College
FREDERICK HARD
President of Scripps College
DA VID DAV IES
Librarian of the Honnold Library
EDWARD ROWLAND SILL
THE TWILIGHT POET
by
ALFRED RIGGS FERGUSON
•
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
1955
Copyright 1955 Springer Science+Bnsiness Media Dordrecht
All rights reserued, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form.
ISBN 978-94-017-6491-9 ISBN 978-94-017-6648-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-6648-7
SoftcoYer reprint of the hardconr 1st editionl955
To my mother
MARGARET WILLIAMS FERGUSON
CONTENTS
PREFACE IX
I. HERITA GE OF BOYHOOD 1
II. YALE YEARS 21
I II. THE VOYAGE AROUND THE HORN: AN IN-
TERLUDE 56
IV. THE YEARS OF INDECISION 72
SACRAMENTO: 1862-1864
DOMESTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE: 1864-1866
V. SETTLING DOWN lll
VI. A TEACHER IN CALIFORNIA 141
VII. THE FINAL YEARS: LITERATURE AND DUTY 178
VIII. THE POETIC PATTERN . 208
APPENDIX A. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PUBLICATIONS • 239
APPENDIX B. RESTRICfED BIBLIOGRAPHY 248
INDEX 250
PREFACE
The minor author caught in the turbulent currents of his age
is in many ways more representative of the shifting patterns of his
time than is the major writer who stands above his era dominating
its development. Since among nineteenth century American writers
Sill was one of the most attractive personally and one of the most
gifted as a Ietter writer, I am fortunate in this study to have a mass
of correspondence to draw from in creating the portrait of his
personal history and of his artistic reaction to his age. For the
privilege of making use of Sill's letters, so reflective in their style
of his definite quality as a man, I am deeply grateful to Miss
Florence B. Mills of Windsor, Connecticut, who has been generous
in granting permission for the use of Sill materials and patient in
answering my questions concerning her relative.
Quatations from manuscripts have been reproduced exactly
except for the regularization of the use of the apostrophe. To each
citation from a manuscript source I have appended an abbrevia
tion indicating the location of the original Ietter. A list of these
abbreviations is given below. Whenever possible I have quoted
from the manuscripts of letters rather than from any published
version. In the case of letters from Sill to Henry Holt, however, I
have drawn on copies made from original letters that appear to
have been destroyed. Although many of these Ietters have been
published in whole or in part by William Belmont Parker in his
earlier biography of Sill (Edward Rowland Sill: His Life and
Work, Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1915), I have used copies,
usually more complete than the published versions, deposited in
the University of California Bancroft Library by Milicent W.
Shinn, Sill's pupil and friend. The location of these important
copies I have indicated by the same abbreviation given to original
X PREFACE
manuscripts. Important as Sill's correspondence is to this study, I
have made no attempt to supply here a complete checklist of his
letters, since Professor Stanley T. Williams and Miss Barbara D.
Simison, of Yale University, are engaged in the preparation of
such a record to accompany their forthcoming selected edition
of Sill letters.
This study has grown out of my doctoral dissertation accepted
at Yale University in 1948. The notes and bibliography indicate
specific indebtedness to fellow scholars, but beyond such indica
tions I should like to express my gratitude for the generous assist
ance of Mr. Frederick C. Waite for information concerning the
early days of Western Reserve University. Mrs. W. K. Newton of
the Wayne County Historical Society at Honesdale, Pennsylvania,
and Mrs. Gladys Chamberlin of the Summit County Historical
Bureau at Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, have searched their records far
beyond the call of duty. The staffs and officers of many libraries
have given me aid and permission to make use of manuscripts; I
owe an special debt to the Yale University Library and to the
Corporation of Yale University for college memorabilia, letters
from Sill to his college classmates and lifelong friends, and Faculty
Records; the Roughton Library at Harvard University for the
Sill-Aldrich letters; the Johns Hopkins University Library for the
letters to Daniel Coit Gilman; the Bancroft Library of the Univer
sity of California for the Sill letters and memorablia collected by
Milicent W. Shinn and J. C. Rowell; the Davis Library at Phillips
Exeter Academy; the Western Reserve University Library; and
the New York Public Library. Mr. Roland I. Stringham, Mr.
Harold K. Palmer, Mr. Anson S. Blake, and Mrs. Leonard Bacon
all graciously answered my queries about Sill's life in California.
I must finally express my gratitude to all those who by assistance
and advice made this study possible. I am particularly indebted to
Stanley T. Williams and Barbara D. Simison for the use of letters
which they had collected, as well as for generous aid in answering
my constant questions. Professor Williams directed the dissertation
on which this study is based, encouraged its many revisions, and
offered me counsel and ,personal interest throughout all the stages
of my Iabors. In my work I have received courtesies for which I
am much indebted from Newton Arvin, Norman Holmes Pearson,
Dwight Culler, and Benjamin T. Spencer, who gave me invaluable
PREFACE XI
advice during the revision of my manuscript. To Ohio Wesleyan
University I owe a special acknowledgement for a grant-in-aid
which assisted me in preparing my manuscript for publication.
The deepest and most imperative of all my obligations is to my
wife, Mary Anne Heyward Ferguson.
The following abbreviations have been used in parentheses in
the notes to indicate the location of manuscript material:
Y. ..... Yale University Library
C ...... University of California Library
JH ......
Johns Hopkins University Library
H ...... Harvard University Library
The following publishers and persans have allowed the use of
material which they have copyrighted; to each the author wishes
to express appreciation:
Brandt and Brandt, agents of the Benet estate, for permission to
quote from John Brown's Body in Selected Works of Stephen
Vincent Benet, Rinehart and Company, copyright 1927, 1928, by
Stephen Vincent Benet;
Mr. Newton B. Parker, for quotations from Edward Rowland
Sill: His Life and Work (1915), by William Belmont Parker;
Mrs. Edgar Lee Masters, for permission to quote from Spoon
River Antholog;y;
Dodd, Mead & Company, for permission to quote from The
Life of Daniel Coit Gilman (New York, 1910), by Fabian Franklin;
Houghton Mifflin and Company, for permission to quote from
The Prose of Edward Rowland Sill (1900), The Poetical Works of
Edward Rowland Sill (1906), The Poems of Thomas Bailey Al
drich (1904), and The Garrulities of an Octogenarian Editor
(1923), by Henry Holt;
California University Press for permission to quote from Up
and Down California, 1860-1864, The Journal of William H.
Brewer (1930), edited by Frances P. Farquhar;
Yale University Press for permission to quote from Around the
Horn: A Journal.· December 10, 1861 to March 25, 1862 (New
Haven, 1944), edited by Stanley T. Williams and Barbara D.
Simison.